Day 15 (June 2)

Contributed by: Jared

The local children holler three words at us: ponga, Yatsko, and Yua!

Ponga means “strength”, a term we've been steadily hollering at one another for a loose translation of “keep it up!”

Yatsko is our beloved John's last name, who perhaps stands out more than others due to his lovely golden locks. And as a chief designer of the cabana structure, his name is regularly called during the work day with enough emphasis, enunciation, and response from Yatsko himself that the children have caught on.

Yua I think is a beautiful exclamation, which began last year when Danielle found herself briefly without words for translation at the Welcome Ceremony. She hollered “Yua!” and the response of “Yua” in unison from the community spurred Danielle to repeat the cry, each time with a spirited response from the group. Now, Danielle is typically greeted with a “Yua!” cheer, serving as her nickname. This has evolved to the point that when our van drives down the Yuan dirt roads, children chase after us yelling “Yua! Yua! Yua!” with enormous smiles on their faces.

The work continued today and we were able to finish sheeting the roof. Tomorrow we hope to get the panels assembled and placed on the roof. A major obstacle has been locating a torch for heat shrinking the gazillions splice fittings we have integrated into the array design. As you might guess, hardware is not as readily accessible in northern Ghana as it is in your typical American town. For instance, this photo [] is of a bolts and nuts shop, aptly name “BOLTS AND NUTS”. Bolts and nuts are all that are available at this shop. Down the road, you might find a wire shop, which carries little but wires. I've spent at least half of a day trying to find pipe wrenches—and although bolts are common enough, I can't for the life of me get across what I mean by the term “wrench” (let alone pipe wrench). Finally, that always observant Matt Moan found a pipe wrench in the dirt outside of a welding shop (another story entirely), and we found ourselves soon equipped with two “all-spinners.”

Anyhoo, back to the torch. In Ghana, a torch is a flashlight—so I find myself describing a hand-held fire device to no avail. We have already sent Trotta to the welding shop where the welders built a simple cone shaped funnel out of sheet metal, which we will hopefully place atop a small propane oven (which is common). The funnel will channel the heat to our heat-shrink splices and we will move forward with the construction of the water plaza.